tagged as north carolina tag leader ahsigmon

Departed from Arlington, VA at 8:55am EDT. Arrived at Washington, DC at 12:20pm EDT.

Waxhaw, NC at 10:52am EDT.

Fayetteville, NC at 10:45pm EDT.

Belmont, NC at 5:29pm EDT.

Bojangles! at 5:26pm EDT in Belmont, NC.

Some Canada Geese were crossing the interstate and to my horror i witnessed one get hit.. In a puff of feathers the beautiful bird was sent spinning .. Long graceful neck whipped around.. :( .. The driver had plenty of time to SLOW DOWN but did not. I went up beside him and looked him in the eye and gave him a thumb DOWN.. he looked at me and probably didn't realize what the big deal was. He probably didn't know that Canada Geese mate for life and he had just destroyed another birds life partner. :(

These birds have every right to land and walk on the highways that scar our world.. On which they've existed longer than us. If they are on the road in front of us we should stop and let them walk past and admire them.

Departed from Apex, NC at 5:08am EDT. Arrived at Statesville, NC at 10:15am EDT.

My first issue! I lost power to my socket - which i charge my phone and garmin. Connection to the battery was ok .. Fuse was good.. No moisture.. But when i scraped the contact with a screwdriver - power restored! Phew .. I may have had to buy a paper map! Don't even know where to get one .. paper maps r us?? Would have to Google it .. No couldn't!!! ;-p

Time to hit the road again, so got the kids up early, packed the car and headed out of Washington DC. However, we decided that a dead run down to Wilmington North Carolina was a waste of a good day - therefore, plugged Colonial Williamsburg into the iPhone Google Maps and off we went. Two hours later we were sitting in the visitor centre buying tickets for the day (you need tickets to enter the colonial district and participate in the town activities). It is not cheap, but even for the 4 hours we were there it was definitely worth it. Colonial Williamsburg is setup to represent how the town was in 1779 during its important involvement in the American Revolutionary war. All the buildings are preserved as such, and everyone dresses in costume representing the era. All in all it was a great way to spend 4 hours. We listened to a historic account by Marquis De Lafayette of how he came from France to serve under Washington during the war (with Lexi and Fe again managing to get involved and entertain the Americans...not sure how they do it!!). We then wandered through the various sites, visiting the bakery, basket making, smithery, gunnery etc. Lexi and Fe got to have a go with the olden style toys. The highlight for Lexi was using her spending money to buy an actual costume dress, hat and slash with some of her birthday money (Fe got a boys hat...of course). We were lucky that during our last hour, there was a further couple of performances that we could see and interact with before leaving.
One other amazing things about Colonial Williamsburg is that it one of its streets is called "Waller Street".....how cool is that!! So I have set Fe the task of finding out why there is a Waller Street and is there any significance in the naming of the street.....we will let you know what we find
If we ever come back to the States, we will definitely put this on our list of places to spend more time at.
We then hit the car to make our way to Wilmington. It was a pretty easy trip all up - but we have been using Sim's iPhone as the GPS in the car. It works pretty well most of the time, but due to the fact that it isn't actually a GPS and uses the mobile signals to triangulate your position, it can sometime get confused. At one point, it was telling me to continue of a interstate for 77 kms, then it told me in 50m to make a right turn (which I did). It then proceeded to recalculate and tell me "oh, sorry....actually the 77 kms was right so can you now do an immediate u-turn in front of oncoming traffic.....no, okay, well make a right turn when you can - okay??"......all I can say is bloody apple products. Anyway, got back on the correct interstate and we made Wilmington by just before 8pm (with a stop off for dinner on the way). The Country Inn & Suites is a very nice place to stay for the night.....the girls even got to have a swim in the indoor pool before going to bed. Tomorrow we head for Savannah, but again we will take the scenic root and see what trouble we can get up to

Been a very busy time over the last couple of days, so haven't been able to update much.
Anyway - Washington DC....what a great place to visit. Excellent combination of history, monuments, exhibits, parks, walks, restaurants....you name it, the place has got it. Not going to try a blow by blow over the 3 days in Washington, but here are the highlights:
1) National Air & Space Museum - definitely a must for kids. The girls had a blast (and frankly so did I...being a big Aussie kid at heart). We all got to climb, push, throttle, steer our way through the history of aircraft and space exploration. In particular, we loved the flight simulators, Einstein planetarium and the historic planes that we got to see up-close and personal
2) International Spy Museum - Justin pre-booked this for us (we owe you big for that one) and it was an absolute blast. There were secret identifies, interactive spy learning experiences, secret corridors to spy from, plus an exhibit on James Bond celebrating all the evil villains from the films. We spent several hours in this place and it could of probably spent some more
3) Museum of Natural History - we had already gone through the museum in NY, but this one had sufficiently different exhibits to again fascinate and educate the girls for several hours. In particular, the marine mammals / whales exhibit and the insert exhibit were really well setup
4) Monuments - you can't throw a stone in DC without hitting a monument to something. However, it was a great place to continue to drill Fe about the revolution and civil war history that I have been trying to drum into her. We spent one whole day walking all around DC going from monument to monument and it was a day well spent. Thomas Jefferson, Abe Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr memorials were packed, but very impressive. However, the stand out was the Franklin Roosevelt memorial....not only was this thing massive, but the attention to detail (particularly the metal working) was truly amazing. The memorial to Albert Einstein was also very popular to the kids as they had been told if you pull his nose, you get his wisdom (or if you stick you finger up his nose you get his sense of humour).
5) Capitol Hill - Impressive, but wasn't able to get in
6) White House - The girls summed it up "it is where the president lives!!)....even they were impressed!! You could actually get up into the gardens (as it was open for one of the 4 days of the year), but we didn't know this and hadn't organised one of the timed tickets - so just had to stand in the normal spot and take pictures
7) Japanese Cherry Blossoms - These cherry blossoms only come out once a year and survive for 2 weeks....lucky us we were there for their final days. We got to take lots of photos of the blossoms while walking around Tidal Basin, plus there was a big Japanese American Festival on the Sunday that we were able to go to which celebrated the ending of the festival
8) National Archive - Again, continuing Fe's education, we got up close and personal to the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights. Seeing how old these documents are really brings home the history
That is pretty much all I can remember at the moment....I am sure I will pick up more when I go through the photos later in the trip....but in summary => Awesome city & highly recommended.

Mountain Home, NC at 6:33pm EDT.

Rockwell, NC at 3:34pm EDT.

Albemarle, NC from 11:44am to 2:34pm EDT (2 hrs, 50 mins).

My friend and I were debating what size pizza to order. The waitress took one look at us and said that we could easily split the 12 inch pizza. I said we might want to get one bigger because "I'm going to put a hurtin on some pizza!" she said "but you are so small!" Yep. Her tip just rose about 10 percent

Caprianos at 7:34pm EDT in Salisbury, NC.

The driver of the National shuttle bus recognized me. My life is pitiful!

Charlotte Douglas Intl Airport from 12:26pm to 12:44pm EDT (18 mins) in Belmont, NC.

Heading to Charlotte to join my rock star travel companions!

Almost time to get this show on the road!

Downtown Raleigh at 2:03pm EDT in Raleigh, NC.