January Getaway

 At Avery, this is the way vacation hours work. You accrue a certain number of hours every pay period. But your vacation bank has a max. So, if you don't use enough hours, you stop accruing them until you use some vacation time. I try to make sure Andrew never gets to that max. Ha! But, when we looked at his pay stub this month, we saw that he was there. Unacceptable! So, he took a random Friday off of work and we decided to take a little overnight getaway. We wanted to stay close by so we could come home quickly if the girls had an emergency. We had the best time!

First stop: Lexington, NC.

Lexington is only about half an hour from home, but we hadn't ever been there. It is a great town and we'd love to go back when it's not so cold.

We stopped at the Davidson County Historical Museum,

which is housed in the old pillared courthouse behind us.

It is a GREAT museum. We had the place to ourselves

and learned a lot about the history of the area.

(But didn't take a lot of pictures.)

There is a photographer who is from the area that had

a lot of displays up, but photos were off-limits in his galleries.

Andrew is bigger than the old-timey jail cells. :)

Main St in Lexington has some really cute stores.

We only stopped in two.

First, the River House Emporium,

which was super cute.

We mostly window-shopped there,

but I did find a great hand-made pottery bowl

to replace one that broke recently.

Their displays were super cute.

The other store we stopped at was The Candy Factory.

It is the CUTEST old fashioned candy store.

We did more than window shop there. Ha!

In fact, when we checked out, the nice woman asked us,

"Is that bag going to be too heavy?"

THAT'S what you want to hear when you're leaving a candy store. :)

They had some old records in the back 

that made me think of B-train.

Lexington is known for their barbeque,

so there are pig statues all over town.

I had checked with a friend from Lexington to ask for recommendations

of where to eat. She gave a long list, but we ended up

choosing Yarborough's. 

It's an older mom-and-pop place that is nothing to look at,

but had GREAT food at reasonable prices. We loved our lunch there.

After lunch, we snagged a quick geocache.

Then out to Boone Cave Park for a little hike.

The cave was on the side of a hill where the sun doesn't

shine, so there were lots of icicles around.

It looked so cool!

It was a good-sized cave inside. Fun to explore for a minute.

Next, we were off to Winston-Salem, where we stayed for the night.

I booked a room at Graylyn estate.

It's a GORGEOUS old estate right in the heart of Winston.

Isn't it awesome?

We LOVED it.

Every estate should have...

an ice cream room!

With cool tile work.

A BUTLER showed us to the ice cream room.

What????

I don't think a butler has shown me anywhere before!

Except, this wasn't quite what I was picturing

for the Ice Cream Room...

It was a mini freezer with ice cream bars in it. Ha!

But they had Choco Tacos!

Which we hadn't tasted in years.

And we could take as much as we wanted.

So we helped ourselves.

And the Choco Tacos were yummy.

There are several buildings on the estate where you can book a room.

I decided to book a room in the Gardener's Cottage.

It was cute, but if we go back, I'll choose a room in the main estate instead.

It just feels more regal there.

But our room was cute and cozy.

And we didn't cross paths with any other guests,

which is a nice perk during a pandemic.

The bathroom was really cute.

We explored the grounds a bit before the sun went down.

The walking paths are busy. Graylyn is right next to Wake Forest University's campus, so there were lots of college students who go for walks on the beautiful grounds. We came to the rescue of a woman who's dog had gotten off his leash. That was an adventure.

Went out for Mexican dinner at Xcaret.

It was actually my third choice of Mexican restaurants.

I LOVE Alma Mexicana, but it is closed temporarily for COVID.

So I chose Crafted: The Art of the Taco, but I was mistaken

about their closing time and we missed it by twenty minutes... oops.

So, I'm glad Xcaret was nearby and open late!

AND they had vegetable tamales, which are one of my favorites.

Yum, yum, yum.

The next morning, we slept in.

And Andrew did church e-mails for a while.

(He spends HOURS every week on church email.)

I read and played word games on my phone.

Then we explored more of the inside of the big house.

Cool spirally staircase

Intricate doorways

This dining room was completely wall-papered

with tiles from a mosque in Constantinople.

So cool!

The dining room

I loved these flower arrangements.

Fancy windows

One of my favorite rooms:

the indoor swimming pool,

which has been converted to a 

socially distanced dining area.

Cool arched door

I think this was an altar from a Hindu temple in India

This is a portrait of the woman of the house,

Mrs. Gray. She's holding tobacco blossoms, 

which is how her family made their money.

The library

With a really cool chess set

And some cute miniature tea sets

And I thought this little kids' chair and sofa were adorable.

When we left the lap of luxury behind us,

we stopped at a nearby museum, SECCA,

Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art.

There were some beautiful pieces,

some disturbing ones,

and others that left us scratching our heads.

This kite was amazing.

I liked the depth in these pieces.

This was one of my favorites.

I love the way the words spill over

like a waterfall.

Shark teeth art.

They had an old vending machine that used to sell packs of cigarettes.

It has been converted into an "Art-o-mat" machines.

you can purchase small pieces of art for five bucks.

What a great idea!

We got two and I love them both.

Our last stop was in Thomasville.

The city website has three different self-guided

walking tours you can do through town:

A commerce one, a historical homes one, and one for historical churches.

I downloaded all three of them.

We started with the commerce one, but it was super boring.

We gave up after reading about the brick work on the third business...

But the tour of historic homes was great!

These were a couple of my favorites.

The churches weren't quite what I expected, but they were ok.

They also have some fun murals around town.

Pepsi is "Very Healthful"???

Gremlins???

And, of course we had to get our picture taken by the iconic giant chair.

Having older kids is awesome. So glad we can leave them at home for little getaways like this. I love having time with Andrew. And we both love exploring this part of the state. It's awesome that we've been here for over 17 years and there's still lots of places where we've never been. Many of the places we visited were in our stake, so it's fun for Andrew to have a better idea where they are, too. Hooray for random days off!