Visiting a Few New Places in North Carolina

When we planned our trip south to Florida, we didn’t want to go south too quickly and risk needing to leave due to a hurricane. Unfortunately, fall seems to be the time of year that some pretty severe ones come through the south. So we decided to spend a few weeks in North Carolina and hopefully enjoy some beautiful fall weather.

I will say that the weather was perfect. Warm and sunny most of the time with cool nights. It even got pretty cold the last couple of nights there. Unfortunately, the leaves seemed to be changing color later so we didn’t see too much in the way of fall colors. I finally saw some very pretty red leaves the last couple of days in the state. We spent 2.5 weeks in the state with most of that time at Thousand Trails Forest Lake in Advance, NC.

Even though this is our 4th time staying there, we found a few new things to do in the area and of course, also stopped at a few of our favorite places. This RV park is located in wine country so we definitely visited a few local wineries and enjoyed the wine and weekend entertainment. Since this is an area also known for its Carolina BBQ, we had to partake of the barbecue a few times.

we were photo bombed! enjoying a sunday afternoon at a local winery

The RV park is enjoyable in the fall, especially walking through the park to see all of the halloween decorations. Most of the seasonal campers there go all out for this holiday and their displays were great. We met up with Anna and Mark in the park, fellow full timers who we have seen at a few Thousand Trails parks in the past year. We managed to get to together with them a couple of times in Arizona and it was nice to see them again. Anna also likes to walk, so we got in quite a few morning walks around the campground. We both enjoyed the cool mornings and especially the fog lifting off of the lake. They also joined us on a Sunday afternoon at one of the wineries to enjoy the music.

Since I was looking for something new to visit in the area, Anna suggested a trip into Winston Salem and suggested a few places to see. We started our day at Mast General Store. This store was established in 1883 and seemed to carry a little bit of everything. It was much bigger than I anticipated and we enjoyed browsing through the store. The store employees recommended a few other places to see in that section of the city so we strolled around a few blocks. Unfortunately, most of the businesses were not open, even the restaurants and we were hoping to grab lunch there. We walked over to see their smaller version of the Empire State Building. The building was definitely a replica; just not quite as tall.

From there, we headed over to visit Old Salem. This was my favorite spot of the day. This town is similar to Williamsburg, with people dressed in period clothing and demonstrating how they lived when the town was established. Even though we didn’t pay to enter some of the buildings; we enjoyed walking up the main street and checking out the old buildings. I loved that many of the building were still in use as homes today. We found a coffee shop that also sold beer. I enjoyed a coffee and pastry since it was lunch time. This was Tim’s type of spot so he stayed and had a beer while I wandered through the rest of the old town. Anna had mentioned a few other stops to make in town, but we decided that was enough for one day so we will have to go back another time to catch those places.

one of the older buildings. Check out the wooden musket at the top of the house

A local we were chatting with one day mentioned that we should go to the North Carolina Zoo. I hadn’t heard about the zoo and since it wasn’t too far away, we decided to make a trip there. What a wonderful surprise the zoo was. It is set in a beautiful and very large property so if you go, prepare to do a lot of walking up and down hills. Currently they have two areas, North America and Africa, and they are building the Asia section that should be open in another year. Since the zoo is spread out, there are shuttle buses that can be taken to get around. We walked through both sections and then just took the bus from the Africa parking lot back to the North America lot where we were parked. If you don’t take the shuttle, you have to walk back through the entire zoo so I was very happy there was a shuttle. We both enjoyed the day and will probably make a trip back there after they open the next section.

aren’t the grounds at this zoo beautiful!

After our 2 week stay, we headed just a little further south and stayed at a Harvest Host location outside of Charlotte for 2 nights. We decided to rejoin Harvest Host this year and wanted to make sure we visited a few of those sites on our travels. This site, Gibson Mill, was different from most sites we have done before. It is an industrial setting in town so not scenic like the farms and wineries but it was a lot of fun and we enjoyed staying there. They have converted this old textile mill initially built in 1899 into a retail and entertainment space.

The property has multiple buildings that house a huge Antique Mall, a vintage car dealer, a couple of breweries, a couple bars, an Italian restaurant and a Food Hall. We tried out quite a few of the businesses over the 2 days and it was nice to be able to walk to go out to eat and to have a drink or two then easily walk back to the RV. The RV lot was behind the buildings and we had the place to ourselves the first night. We were joined by two other RVs the next night. A fun place to stay but even though we didn’t have to pay to stay there, we sure spent a bit of money in the various businesses.

We are now heading further south and will be at our site in Florida soon. More on the rest of our trip in the next post.

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Visiting a Few New Places in North Carolina

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