Visiting Friends in NC

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We are really enjoying our stay near the Blue Ridge, but we have an appointment to have some exterior window shades installed In Mocksville North Carolina on Monday morning. The 240 mile drive is well over our normal driving limit, but the route is mainly on interstate highways so it isn’t too bad. We have been debating getting Magne Shades for the rig for many years. It seems like everybody we meet that has them, really likes them. We had installed window awnings on some of the side windows back in 2020 but never got around to making the plunge for these.

The front windshield of class A motorhomes is a rather large piece of glass that allows in a lot of light especially when the rig is parked facing the south. This sunlight is appreciated during the colder months of the year, but in the warmer months, we can get a large amount of unwanted solar gain heating up the inside of the rig. We have interior shades that can be lowered to help reduce the heat coming in on summer days, but they only do so much. We also have a large piece of Reflectix (think aluminum foil covered bubble wrap) that we custom fit for our windshield. We can put this up inside the windshield which does wonders for blocking out the solar gain but completely eliminates our view.

This is where Magne Shade comes in. A special fabric is custom fit to your windshield dimensions and is held in place outside by powerful magnets. This fabric reduces UV coming into the rig by 90% but permits people inside to see outside quite well. The company also makes shades for other windows up in the cockpit area to help with solar gain here as well. Many people will order the shades and do the install themselves. It didn’t look too complicated but when we realized where the factory was located, we decided to just work the small town of Mocksville into our route to the south and schedule to have them do the install.

We pull into their parking lot on Sunday afternoon and find one other motorhome already there. The next morning the crew comes out and starts working on both of our rigs. Part of the process is to wait an hour for the adhesive disks on the magnet to cure, but by lunchtime, we were done and given a demonstration of how to install and remove the shades from the ground with a telescoping pole. This is where the advantage of the magnets comes into play, no ladder is required to install the shades. As we are getting ready to pull out, another rig is pulling in for an afternoon install. This place is definitely busy. In fact, we ordered our shades in early August for this late October install date.

We don’t have far to travel after leaving Mocksville. The plan is to stop at the Elks Lodge in Greensboro North Carolina just under 60 miles away. They do not have any RV services but do have a fairly large parking lot. As we pull in, one of the lodge members comes over to explain where they would like us to park the rig to be out of the way of lodge activities. We get parked and head into the bar to let them know what our plans are and pay our donation. The rig will stay here 2 nights although we won’t be in it the first night. Instead, we have made plans to visit our friends Dick and Wardene who live in the area. We first met them over 6 years ago at a Habitat for Humanity RV Care-A-Vanner build north of Seattle Washington and have kept in touch with them over the years. They have a new place so we got invited to come over and spend the night at their home.

We had a great time that evening wandering around their neighborhood and catching up with what’s going on in their life. The weather wasn’t the greatest for our stay but at least we found some dry time to head over to Glencoe Mill Village just north of Burlington NC.

Dick, Wardene and Chris Pose on Bridge

We have an Adventure Lab that tours us around the old village established in 1880. There are some neat old buildings and we learned a lot about the mills that were built along the Haw River. Our timing wasn’t the greatest because when we went to head into the museum, it was closed for lunch. Even so it was a nice are to explore but would have been even better if it had been warmer and sunnier.

Oversized Weaving Shuttle

Falls Along Haw River

Textile Heritage Museum

We spend some of the afternoon visiting with our friends before heading back to the rig which we found safely in the parking lot where we had left it. In the 7 years, there have only been a handful of times where we haven’t spent the night in the rig. Our next stop will be 76 miles east to Raleigh the following morning. We couldn’t get reservations for the campground at the NC State Fairgrounds but we understood that they have a large camping area that is first come first served and we figured this would work out for us especially since we were arriving on a Wednesday.

The fairgrounds is huge and it wasn’t perfectly clear which camping area was the reservations only versus the FCFS. We called the number listed only to be told the FCFS area was for the upcoming NC State football game this weekend, but there had been some cancellations in the reservation portion of the campground. Sure enough, when we checked online for availability, we were able to get a site for the 5 nights we were hoping to stay in the area. We got setup in our full hookup spot and tried to figure out some of the sightseeing highlights in the region. One of the main reasons for our stop here was to visit with a former college roommate but Brian and Kathy had commitments so we had until Sunday before we could meet them for dinner.

The next day we head out to a wide variety of destinations. First stop was the North Carolina Museum of Art. This is very close to the campgrounds and is a rather large place situated on 164 acres of land. Nearly all of the inside exhibit halls are free with only the occasional special exhibitions requiring a fee. It was a rather cold but sunny morning so we headed inside the building first hoping the day would warm up later to explore the outside park and artwork scattered throughout the grounds.

Colorful Picture

There was a wide variety of art on display. It wasn’t simply paintings but lots of rather unusual pieces. I guess as an engineer, I often look at some of the artwork and wonder where the idea for a piece came from because there were many that I would classify as “odd”. Not that the quality of the artwork was lacking - far from it. But many of the pieces left me scratching my head.

Falling Man!

The other unusual thing about the museum were the number of security guards. It was early on a Thursday morning and I’m pretty sure the guards outnumbered the visitors. I guess being a free museum, there could be all sorts of riff-raff wandering around and they wanted to make sure none of the one of a kind artwork was stolen or damaged.

Hmmmm!?!

Once we thoroughly explored the various exhibits inside we head outside to walk the many trails around the park. Surprisingly there wasn’t an Adventure Lab here to act as a tour guide, but there were a couple of geocaches that brought us to some neat artwork.

I-Beam Art

Disorienting Mirror Display

Colorful

One of the most enjoyable stops was at an art installation named the “Cloud Chamber”. We originally only came here because there was a virtual geocache placed here, and at first glance, it looked like it was just some sort of round stone hut with a domed “living roof” in the middle of the woods. As we were standing next to the thing, the door opens and a person unexpectedly comes out of the dark hut. We got an explanation of what it was and what to do. It sounded very intriguing. We were told to go inside, and sit on one of the benches along the interior wall. Then wait several minutes to allow your eyes to adjust to the darkness.

Outside of Cloud Chamber

While it was very dark inside, it wasn’t completely without light. There appears to be a small hole in the domed roof that lets in a limited amount of light. After several minutes, our eyes went from seeing darkness to seeing patterns displayed on the wall. And after a couple more minutes, the patterns began to take shape and looked like trees - albeit upside down trees. It turns out that we were in something called a camera obscura. As an image scientist at Eastman Kodak for 32 years, I would have used the more common name of a pinhole camera. Early in my career at Kodak, I played around with pinhole cameras so I was quite familiar with the concept but had never considered having one so large such that I could actually be the sensor inside the thing. I assumed that getting a picture of this would be next to impossible and I would only have the memory of what I saw, but I gave the iPhone a try and was amazed at the quality of the picture I was able to get handholding my phone. As an engineer, this was my favorite art exhibit at the museum!

Inside Camera Obscura with Image of Trees on Wall

Our next stop would take us to the NC State Farmers Market. As we travel, we often try to find farmers markets near our stops. Our goal is to find fresh fruits and vegetables but more often than not, the ones we find are mainly craft vendors with very few booths with actual farm produce. We had heard good things about the one in Raleigh so we needed to check it out. The first surprising thing was the market is open 7 days a week so we didn’t really need to do much planning for our visit. The other things is how humongous the place is. There are a handful of large buildings with the main one for the produce being 2 football fields long and 50 feet wide with several dozen vendors lined up on both sides. We went up and down the aisle and picked up a couple bags of produce. I was intrigued by the one vendor that had at least 30 different types of hot peppers. Even though I appreciate spicy foods, I’m pretty sure there were some of these peppers that would nearly kill me!

How Now Brown Cow

Vendors at Farmers Market

How Hot Can You Take It?

There are other buildings that do have a wide assortment of craft type items and quite a few restaurants to chose from. We timed our visit to enjoy lunch at the NC Seafood Restaurant. Fortunately we had our cooler in the car because the portions of our plates worked for our lunch and a couple more meals later in the week. I imagine if we lived in the area, we would be regulars at this farmers market.

Napping Cow in Autumn Display

With our full bellies, we head over to Pullen Park. We had an Adventure Lab we wanted to do in this 66 acre park. Opened in 1887, it is the oldest public park in the state. There is a 3 acre pond with an island and some paddle boats for rent.

Entrance to Pullen Park

Wood Carving

Huge Swan Display

They are also the 5th oldest operating amusement park in the country. There are a very limited number of amusement rides. The train circles around a half mile track. The old carousel is from 1911 but it was closed so I could only look thru a window at what looked like a rather nice group of animals to choose from. There is a statue of Andy Griffith and his son Opie, because Raleigh was the big town near the fictional town of Mayberry on the Andy Griffith Show. It is definitely a cute little park to wander around

Normal Size Caboose

Kiddie Train Goes Round and Round

Carousel Building

A Look Inside

Chris with Andy and Opie

We had one more stop we wanted to get to for yet another Adventure Lab. The bad news was we had spent so much time with out first 3 stops of the day, we would only have an hour to explore the JC Raulston Arboretum. We generally like to take our time at these types of venues but we figured we could hustle thru the place and at least complete the 5 stops for the lab cache.

Raulston Arboretum

We worked our way around the bulk of the arboretum and got a chance to see how nice it was. There is a pretty wide variety of gardens that would have been nice to stroll through at a more casual pace.

Entering Japanese Garden Area

Bee Hotel

The following day, we planned on heading just to the west of town and see some things in the Chapel Hill area. Part of mission was to also find geocaches in several NC counties we have yet to visit. Our first major stop was at the North Carolina Botanical Garden. It was a rather chilly morning to be walking the gardens but we still enjoyed it.

Elaborate Entry Gate

Fish on a Stick

The restored Paul Green cabin was an interesting stop. Apparently he was a famous writer from the area and his cabin was moved to the grounds of the arboretum in 1991. The cabin was open and had all sorts of displays about his life and writings.

Paul Green Cabin

Inside Cabin

There are some hiking trails to the south of the arboretum in an area known as the Piedmont Nature Trails. We figured a real hike might help to warm us up plus there were a couple of geocaches hidden we wanted to find. After our hike, we headed back thru the arboretum and stopped at the visitor center. If we weren’t on a rather extensive mission for the day, we likely could have spent much more time exploring the gardens.

Boardwalk Along Trail

Pitcher Plant

Very Detailed Bloom

Owl Artwork

Our next stop was to the campus of University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. We tend to enjoy walking around college campuses and while I am not a big fan of the North Carolina Tar Heel basketball program, we figured it might be fun to see one of the oldest universities in the country - chartered in 1789.

Many Hands Make Light Work

Morehead Building

We had a couple of Adventure Labs that we could use to act as tour guides and even a geocache or two to look for. It is a pretty campus and we spent a couple hours wandering around. The campus was almost peaceful when the students were in the classrooms with just a few people out walking around the buildings, but when the classes let out, all of a sudden, there was a sea of students scurrying about to their next class. We saw one group of prospective students and their parents on a tour. We were tempted to join the group to get an even better description of campus but decided we might not be welcomed.

Slow Moving Lizard

After finishing up at Chapel Hill, we took a rather lengthy, circuitous route back home. Our goal was to hit a few more counties. One stop was in the town of Saxapahaw right along the Haw River. We saw there was a small brewery in town - Haw River Farmhouse Ales - so we stopped for a cold one and sat out on the patio. We also stopped in the town of Apex. Our only reason for the visit was this out of the way town has one of the rarest geocache types - the Webcam Cache. Back in the days when geocaching was starting, a webcam cache required finders to contact a friend back home with a computer that could log into the website with the camera. They would then need to wait for the geocacher in the field to get in view of the camera and have the friend grab a screenshot. Today, with cellphones, it is much less tedious to complete a webcam. In the case of this one in Apex, it took us a while to figure out where the camera was and where we should stand to be in the picture. This webcam actually shows a continuous video stream unlike others that only display still pictures every minute or so. But there is a substantial time lag between when we were standing at the camera and when we finally showed up on the screen. The whole day was a fun one but was rather long and tiring.

Brewery in Saxapahaw

Dock Along Haw River

Screenshot From Webcam - Us in Lower Left

We wanted to get a proper hike in and there seemed to be a wide number of trails to choose from at Umstead State Park just a little west of Raleigh. It’s a big park with many trails. Some are multi use trails for hiking, biking and horseback riding. We had a couple of geocaches to go for as well so we ended up going for those first which had us take a couple of the multi use trails. These are really more like roads with a nice gravel surface and quite wide. We saw many people out with their bikes and we wondered if we should have explored the park by bicycle instead. Too bad we aren’t here for a longer period of time because I’m sure we would be back with the bikes. One of the first caches was near an unusual piece of artwork. A 25 foot fallen oak tree was transformed by a couple of chainsaw artists back in 2017 into a very intricate forest scene.

Nice Multi Use Trail

Amazing Log Carving!

Once we had our geocaches logged, we picked a true hiking trail for the rest of our visit. The Sycamore Trail is just over 7 miles long although with our detour to see the log art, our hike would end up being a bit shorter. It was a very pretty trail and there were a fair number of other people out enjoying it as well. I guess that’s what happens when we go for a hike on a nice Saturday in early November.

Reflection in Creek

Fungus

Trail Right Next to Creek

Having seen a small portion of this park, we will need to work another trip to Raleigh so we can explore more of this wonderful state park.

Nice Stone Bridge

We took it easy for most of Sunday and then headed over to my former roommate’s house for dinner. We had last seen Brian and Kathy about 2 years ago when we were staying in the Blue Ridge Mountains and they came to visit us. We still had a lot of catching up to do and even had a chance to meet their grandson before he went up to bed. It is definitely great being able to work visits with friends into our travels and to think we managed to get two visits in a relatively short distance.