bobanddenisewanderlust

Saturday- We went over to Nancy and Dave’s home in Canton, which is a suburb of west Ashville. We spent the afternoon talking and using their internet to complete some tasks that we needed to do online. The RV Park has terrible internet reception.

We went to a great dinner with them at Stone Ridge Tavern.

Sunday-We met up with Nancy/Dave and Lorrie/John at the Arboretum for a rose program at 1. Lorrie and John had arrived back in Ashville yesterday from a European Jazz cruise. Their plane had been delayed and so they slept yesterday.

We enjoyed the rose display, looking and sniffing the fragrances. We also walked through the Bonsai area. The displays were impressive.

From the Arboretum we went to Hendersonville where John and Lorrie are building a house. We met up at the Mast General store where we had a couple of items we wanted to purchase.

We left the store area walking through a festival on the street. We walked back to the cars. When we were traveling to dinner at a German Restaurant, we rec’d a call from Wilson RV Park. I had messed up the dates. We thought that we were supposed to leave tomorrow. Our reservation was actually through today. We had to leave our friends and race back to the park and pack up the RV as people were waiting for the site. While driving back to the park, I called the other RV Park that we had looked at last week. They had a site available.

The other RV Park, Bear Creek, was only about 2 miles away. We arrived, paid with our Good Sam discount, and settled into the site. This is a much nicer RV Park, with good internet; we will stay there next time we are in town. Bob walked the dogs, we fed them, and then he walked them again. We ate some sandwiches for dinner, and took back off to Nancy and Dave’s home.

Nancy and Dave had stopped at a grocery store and picked up dessert for everyone. We arrived and everyone was sitting on the deck in the back. We stayed until 9, visiting with our friends. Thank you Nancy and Dave for the excellent cheese cake and ice cream. We hope to visit again next year!

Monday- We left the park in the early morning. We traveled north on I-77 to I -44. We had a two night reservation at Mayberry RV Park. This was a very nice park. We had a Good Sam discount. The internet, which was very good, was included in the price. $38/night

This was a very interesting place. The land had been owned by Eng and Chan Bunker. They were the famous Siamese twins. They are the reason that conjoined twins are called Siamese twins. Eng and Chan were originally from Siam, which is now Thailand. The park is owned by direct descendants of the twins.

We arrived around 1:30, so we went into town to the Visitor Center to see what we wanted to visit while we were in town. As it was Memorial Day, many of the stores were closed. We did stop and have some ice cream at one store. I had a scoop of chocolate brownie which was okay. Bob had chocolate and declared it was the worst he has had.

We returned, ate dinner, and sat our reading our books outside, enjoying a nice evening.

Tuesday- We stopped at a UPS store for me to return an item to Amazon. Then we had Google try to find the museum. Google kept sending us to the Andy Griffith Playhouse. So we went to the Visitor Center for directions.

The gal told us it is hard to find, as it is behind the trees, that are behind the statue of Andy and Opie, as there is no sign. So we went back to the Playhouse and parked in their lot.

We went into the museum, $17 for the two of us. It is a small museum but very interesting. I did not realize how many movies and record albums that Andy Griffith had in his career.

There were exhibits about Don Knott’s and the other cast members.

When we left, we were told that there were other exhibits in another building. There we found “Betty Lou’s” information. She was a very well-known actress.

There was also a Siamese Twins exhibit. We learned a lot more about them. They were born in Siam to a poor family. Since they were an oddity, they were taken to meet the king of Siam. Eventually, they started touring around the world, some of the time with the Ringling Brothers circus. They learned to read and write while touring. A friend, named Bunker, suggested they visit Mt. Airy. They liked the area so much that they bought a large parcel of land and settled there.

They married sisters, and changed their last name to Bunker. They spent 3 nights in one home and 3 nights in the other. They had a lot of children between them. They owned slaves and were staunch supporters of the south in the Civil War.

At age 62, one of the twins contracted pneumonia, and died. The physician was called to separate the twins, but arrived too late, and the second twin had died also. The twins and one of the wives were buried in front of one of the houses. The second wife lived for 25 more years. When she died, she wanted to be buried in the White Baptist Church cemetery. So they dug up the twins and the other wife, and buried them all at the Baptist Church.

While still in town, we visited Wally’s Garage. The owner, who was working there asked us where we were from; we said Sun City AZ, and she said she used to live in Lake Havasue. It’s a small world!

Above is a patrol car. Tours are done in the parol cars. It cost $50 for a trip, for the car. So it was $50 for 5 people or $50 for 2 people. $10 per person when you have 5 people was good, but it was $25 each for the 2 of us, so we declined.

Above is Andy Griffiths childhood home. It is a 4 room house, which is currently a B&B.

We stopped at Walmart for groceries and checked the Sheetz, to make sure we could easily get diesel there in the morning. We returned to the RV Park and had a quiet evening inside, as it had become more humid.

Wednesday- We stopped at the Sheetz for diesel, $4.29/gal. We continued east on I-74 to Durham, where we turned north on I-85. We had stopped for more diesel in a small town after Durham, as the price of fuel is higher in Virginia than North Carolina. We paid $4.59/gal.

We crossed into Virginia. Google wanted us to stay on the interstate, so we took I-95 in Petersburg, where I went to Nursing School. We moved onto I-295, then I-64 south, taking us to Williamsburg. We drove into the Thousand Trails where we stay for free with our membership.

I asked for a site where we could get satellite. The gal gave us two choices and we moved into A-26. We settled in and had a quiet evening watching Ozark on Netflix. Surprisingly, the internet is free at this park, and pretty good!

Thursday- We went to lunch at the Honey Butter café, in Norge. The food was very good, and I had the best grits I have ever had! We went to Walmart. We wanted to go to the Pottery Factory, but it is sort of gone.

This was one of our favorite places in Williamsburg. Unfortunately, they had closed the original Pottery Factory and opened an upscale place. At the old factory it was hard to find a parking place. At the new one, there was no one there. It’s a shame, we were both so looking forward to our visit there.

We had a quiet evening at home watching Ozark on Netflix, once the thunderstorms passed.

Friday- Laundry day. We were going to the park laundry, but the machines were in use, so we went to a Laundromat we had seen on Hwy 60. It was small. We were only able to get 4 machines. So we washed and dried most of the items.

We returned to the park, ate lunch and went up to the park laundry to finish our laundry. We had forgotten the sheets, so it was okay. We found that two of the washers were not in use, there were only 4, and 2 driers, so we did the rest of our laundry. While we were there, I extended our reservation by one day.

We returned to the rig and had a quiet afternoon, reading our books. We had decided to go out to dinner. We went to Ocean and Ale for dinner. I had tried to get a reservation, but the gal said just show up. We did and were seated right away. Bob had a crab cake dinner with onion rings, which were excellent. I had the crab taco’s, also excellent.

We returned to the rig and sat out watching so many weekenders arriving and setting up their rigs, while reading our books.  We finished watching Ozark on Netflix this evening.

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