When we were in South Carolina, we visited a horrible Mexican Food restaurant. It was, by far, the worst Mexican food I’ve ever had in my life. I tasted the things on my plate, was disgusted, and left hungry. Neither Richard nor the boys were happy, either. When my sister suggested Mexican food in her town, and promised it was excellent, we reluctantly agreed to get back up on that horse again. She was right. It was delicious and we had a wonderful time. The best part was when our nephew kept my sister busy by repeatedly trying to throw his plate on the floor. Heh…

On Saturday, we did something we absolutely DREAD. We took all the boys to…Chuck E. Cheese. The pizza is okay but the noise, oh my gosh, THE INCESSANT NOISE! I can only take it for an hour or two before I need to curl up under the table in a fetal position and go to my “happy place.” Of course, the boys loved it, and can’t wait to go back again someday. I am SO glad there isn’t one anywhere near Bangor, Maine! Max enjoyed the video games while Mason’s favorite parts were the Barney ride and the cotton candy, which he wolfed down like a hamburger. I had to tell him it was NOT going to fill him up. He didn’t care. I posted a video of Mason eating cotton candy like a starving man HERE.

My sister enjoyed the cotton candy, too!

That night, back at my sister’s house, we had a rip-roaring, boisterous game of Scrabble!

Sunday was our last day there so we took one last trip to The Melting Pot. Between the Melting Pot in Virginia and the one in Myrtle Beach, I think we ate there five times over the past two months. We have our own fondue sets (two of them) at our house but it seems much more fun when somebody else is fixing everything for you. That night, we played Scrabble again and it was even more competitive than the night before. No, I didn’t win either night! >:(

On Monday, we would head north again, this time to New Jersey.

I’ve posted more pictures of our trip HERE.

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After he and Andi both finished their schoolwork for the day, they rode all the way around the block together. Max didn’t fall at all. When he rode back into our spot here…he ran into the back of our car. Don’t worry. He didn’t even get a scratch and neither did the car. After we realized there were no injuries, we all had quite a belly laugh about that.

On Tuesday, Max did his schoolwork while we did business stuff and then Richard took the boys to the park. In the afternoon, the boys played outside while Richard drove to the store and bought goodies for a cookout. Andi, Frank and Randy all stayed for dinner. It was a lot of fun and we sure will miss them.

Wednesday was the day Max was dreading. He started to get teary-eyed whenever he thought about leaving Andi. We woke up early and got all packed up. I’m pretty sure I will never get all the sand out of this RV! It is EVERYWHERE! Andi and her dad spent about an hour with us before it was time to pull out. Max said a tearful goodbye and we took pictures. We pulled away and Max and Andi were waving to each other. Max was very, very sad for the rest of the day and that evening. He called Andi after we got to our next destination. That cheered him up a bit, but not much.

It rained most of the day, which fit Max’s mood. Our next stop was a hotel in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. We parked the RV, checked in, and went to our room. It had quite a 70s feel to it with all the light greens and geometric patterns. I’m pretty sure Carol Brady herself decorated it!

We dumped our bags, and found a fantastic North Carolina barbeque place for lunch. If you’ve never had North Carolina barbeque, you have sadly neglected your taste buds and your soul. It is AWESOME! After stuffing ourselves with pulled pork, we visited the Wright Brother’s Museum for one of Max’s field trips. Luckily, the rain had stopped for awhile.

It was very interesting for all of us…except Mason. He was far more interested in the huge empty field outside, where he made a friend. His friend didn’t speak any English and Mason doesn’t speak Spanish (except for a few phrases he’s picked up from Dora the Explorer) but they got along so well! They laughed and ran and laughed some more! You see, you don’t have to speak somebody’s language to be their buddy! When we left, Mason cried and said, “Oh no! My friend!!”

I posted a short video of Mason with his friend HERE. Toward the end, you can see how easily a 3-year-old can get distracted by a passing truck. Ha ha.

That evening, we drove along the coast, looking at endless rows of homes for rent. Of course, it’s not the busy season so most of them are vacant and look very cold, dark and lonely. It was chilly and still misty with intermittent rain so trying to imagine thousands of people in flip flops and bathing suits, trudging to the beach, was a bit difficult. We had dinner at a local place that was just a hair better than awful. We shoulda gone back to the barbeque place!!

I’ve posted more pictures of our trip HERE.

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Somewhere in North Carolina, I looked up from my laptop and realized we’d gotten beyond the snow line! I was so excited!! As we kept heading south, the digital thermometer in the RV that measures the outdoor temperature kept getting higher and higher. When it hit 50, we were just about ecstatic! We got to our campground before dark and checked in. I later took the boys to the beach where they did their “We Made It!” dance.

We ordered pizza on Tuesday night, and watched Lost. Wednesday Richard’s busiest day of the week so we worked while Max did his schoolwork for the day. The boys got to play outside in the afternoon, which is something they wouldn’t be doing in Maine this time of year!

We got off early (at 5:00 p.m.) and went out to dinner, which was okay but nothing to shout about. We then went to a bookstore and out for ice cream. The boys were pretty happy about that! Everybody had a new book to read last night and I even bought some goodies for loved ones back in Maine. We’ll take a trip to the post office later this week so we can mail a package to them.

Today, Max is starting a new homeschooling theme about the Medieval Period in preparation for an outing we have planned for this trip.

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There is a section of I-40 outside of Asheville, coming off of the Smokey Mountains (looks like Black Mountain on the map), where the grade is so steep that there are large warning signs about your brakes overheating if you ride them. This is especially a problem for trucks and/or RVs like ours.

By the time we got to the bottom, our brakes were smelling it up good. So decided to pull off at a Stuckey’s and let them cool down. Ended up buying a case of pecan rolls, enough for us to keep one and send one to each kid back home.

We were trying to get to Chapel Hill, which is a good 4 hours. We got all the way there and Angie decided we should bite the bullet and go all the way to Quantico – an idea I had suggested before we left Asheville, but one that she poo-pooed on at the time.

Women.

So we ended up driving about eight hours yesterday. But no more driving now until Tuesday. We’re having a nice, relaxing visit with Angie’s sister and brother-in-law all weekend.

It just so happened that three of our authors live along the same general route that ends here in Asheville. After visiting all of them, we now are heading back across the state toward Virginia to spend Memorial Day weekend with Angie’s sister and brother-in-law.

It is beautiful here. And the weather is, for lack of a better word, perfect. It is a shame we can’t spend more time here. But we’ll have to save it for a future trip.

We found out about the Emerald Hollow Mine in Hiddenite, North Carolina, from watching Kristen Gum, host of The Travel Channel’s Cash and Treasures. She made it look like this place had lots of undiscovered treasure (that is the jist of her show, after all).

Well, the reality is a bit different.

Professional wrestling is fixed. Reality TV is scripted. And the Emerald Hollow Mine, while a fun way to spend an afternoon, is a pretend treasure hunt.

Here is how it works…

You pay $15 for a permit that allows you to dig up buckets of dirt which you then haul several hundred yards to the aforementioned sluice box and sift through it to find “precious” gemstones. (Back-breaking work, by the way.)

The fine print, of course, is that emeralds are at least 5 feet deep. So unless you spend a lot of time digging, and doing so in the right place, you aren’t likely to find any.

For the $15, you can also go creeking – which is sifting through the silt in the creek bed for gemstones. On my way to a bathroom break, I overheard two guys talking about the creek bed being “seeded”. I don’t know if that is true, but Frank found two big separate quartz pieces just lying on the bottom of the creek bed that looked like they came from the inside of a geode. It is hard to believe such big rocks like that aren’t in clusters and deep underground. And it is even more difficult to believe those crystals would have gone unnoticed for so long, given all the people that go over that creek bed each day.

If you want to take the easy way out, you can buy a $5 permit and then buy pre-filled buckets of dirt to sift through, some of which are “guaranteed” to yield certain types of stones.

My guess is the mine owners have already taken most of the truly valuable stones and are selling the scraps to the tourists. You can even take what you found and have it turned into jewelry by their on-site jewelry makers.

In a nutshell, Emerald Hollow Mine is Disneyland for rock nerds.

Now, there is nothing wrong with this as long as you understand that is what it is going into it.

The ducks here are particularly aggressive if you have some bread. Poor Mason was scared.

I had to hold him and watch Angie and Max from a distance.

But the whole experience allowed for some great close-ups…

We’re just hanging out today, catching up on work, doing laundry, and waiting for Frank’s plane to get in. We’ll leave in a few hours to drive up to the Raleigh-Durham airport.

Last night we had an awesome German dinner at the Edelweiss Cafe & Bakery in downtown Selma. Normally they are just a bakery and lunch place, but on Friday and Saturday nights they do a dinner from 4:00 PM to 9:00 PM. I had the Gulasch and Angie had the Bratwurst Plate. Good stuff. Definitely worth the visit.

Tomorrow we head to Statesville for the week to pan for our fortune at the Emerald Hollow Mine.

Unfortunately, we left Cape Hatteras about 11:00 AM to make our way to Washington, NC. Here is a shot from the bridge as we drove back up to the mainland:

We had a great early dinner in Washington at a place called Down on Main Street. They have a “secret recipe” for their crab cakes (which were very good, by the way). Max was impressed when the waitress told us that. Of course, he was even more impressed when we told him what “secret recipe” means.

After dinner, we gave our required tithing to the god of discount merchandise – Walmart ( though it felt like a lot more than 10%). One of the things we bought, though, was a fishing pole for Max. The campground we are at is on the local creek. Angie and Max when fishing while Mason and I did laps around the playground. (Mason hasn’t quite figured out yet that the playground equipment is for playing on.)

Max caught three fish. Here is the first one he caught:

Tomorrow we’re off to Raleigh – where we will pick up Frank on Sunday. He is flying in to spend spring break with us at an emerald mine. Geology is a hobby of Frank’s and we thought it would be fun for him to spend his vacation prospecting.

Funny coincidence – Frank found out today that his science teacher has been to this exact same mine. Frank even saw some of the emeralds the teacher found while there.

We arrived in the late afternoon yesterday and the winds were gusting to 40 MPH. Max had to wear his swim goggles just to keep the sand out of his eyes as he played outside.

When the wind caught the screen door and slammed it hard enough to take off a finger, we decided it was time for Max and Mason to play inside.

The wind buffed the RV all night. And there were even people here sleeping in tents, who I felt quite sorry for.

Today the wind is maybe half what it was yesterday, but still fairly strong. The white-caps make getting near the water a risky proposition.

That is if you can get to the water. The winds last night wiped out the stairs to the beach.