It has been a long time since I have updated, not because I've been lazy, but mostly because we haven't had a chance to explore as much lately. But that has now changed a little bit :)
About a month ago, Mitchell and his friends that were visiting us went to Myrtle Beach for the night. I met up with Mitchell there the next day (Saturday) and we spent the rest of our weekend there. I didn't make a whole blog post about it because both mine and Mitchell's phones were dead most of the time, and this is the only picture I have from the whole weekend:
Myrtle Beach was a lot different from what we are used to here - it's relatively quiet here, but that is not the case in Myrtle Beach - lots of tall buildings, and people everywhere - don't get me started on the traffic ;) . We were slightly overwhelmed and didn't really know what to do with our time.. most of the things they have to do there consists of touristy stuff that we've done before (swimming with dolphins, Ripley's museum, ect) and it was still too cold to get in ocean. The weekend we were there was the same weekend they were hosting North Carolina's largest car show, so that could have been why it was so busy.
We found ourselves wandering around Broadway at the Beach - a cool area with a lot of attractions, shops, and dining. In my opinion, we went to Myrtle Beach during a nice time because it was warm enough outside to walk around, yet cold enough that the tourists weren't pouring in so it wasn't too crowded. We ended up going to WonderWorks - you may have heard of it before because apparently it is a chain and there are a few of them out there, but we'd never heard of it and it was a really cool place where we ended up spending most of our day. The best way to describe it is kind of like a science museum, but much larger with more to do.. laying on a bed of nails, virtual/3D simulators, riding a bike in a complete circle, ect. They also had a ropes course where you are harnessed and walk around on little planks in the ceiling - terrifyingly fun! I also played lazer tag for the first time (and beat Mitchell!) Going to WonderWorks was all we really had time for, but we were probably too exhausted for anything else anyways. We freshened up at our hotel (another plus about Myrtle in the off-season is that you can get ocean front hotels for around $60) then went out to dinner, sat in the hot tub, and called it a day.
Last weekend we decided to take a road trip to the mountains about 6 hours away. We stayed in a small town next to Cherokee right in the mountains on Saturday night. Gambling is illegal in North Carolina, but they do have a Harrah's casino in Cherokee because it is an Indian reservation. The drive from our hotel to Cherokee was about 20 minutes, but I spent most of it with my eyes closed. It was right in the mountains with lots of steep drop offs and tight, windy curves.
Long car rides aren't bad with views like this!
This is the view from our [very cheap] hotel. It was stunning.
This was taken less than a mile from the hotel we stayed at
We decided to check out Asheville on our way home on Sunday. If you google North Carolina, you're going to find a lot of people recommend Asheville, I've read a lot about it so I was eager to check it out. We were less than impressed, it was not our style at all (very "hippie"). In Asheville's defense, there are a lot of neat hikes/scenic things to check out (parts of The Hunger Games were filmed there) and we didn't see those particular places. Another strange thing was that the restaurant we ate at for lunch had RC on tap - I have never seen that before. In all honesty, I was somewhat relieved to find Asheville unappealing because there is a lot to do in there, and had we fallen in love with it, we'd have to go back to make sure to check those things off our list - now we don't have to worry about it ;) Although I would go back to Cherokee anytime for a relaxing weekend getaway.
We have some more exciting trips planned that I'm really looking forward to. My birthday will be spent at the Outer Banks, a long strip of islands about 3 hours north of here. One part of the Outer Banks has horses running wild on the beach, and Roadanthe is also in the Outer Banks (as in Nicolas' Sparks' book). Then we will be spending the 4th of July in Washington DC!
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