Fall Road Trip: Day Four

Greensboro, North Carolina:  As we wake up from sleep, we enter into the final day of our Fall road trip.  This is mainly a travel day, but we had a few things planned on the day as well as that daunting 11 hour drive home.   We packed up the car and checked out of the hotel and began our day.

It was a chilly 41 degrees this morning, the coldest day of the trip.  The remaining two items we had on our list of things to do were outside attractions.  Based on the drive before us, the fact that one of them did not open for another two hours and we didn't have time to let it warm up a bit before going hiking.  We decided to pass on them and conduct a quick driving tour of downtown before hitting the road south.

Greensboro was a great city.  For being the third largest city in North Carolina, it never felt like it.  You were not overwhelmed with people or traffic, felt out of place as a tourist and there was tons of things to do.  We filled our days full of stuff to do without ever running out of options.  And we never really go into exploring the rest of the Piedmont.  

After our brief driving tour, we hit the road.  We headed south a bit to Asheboro before stopping for breakfast.  We chose The Dipper, a local breakfast spot inside an old cafeteria.  My wife has her usual ham and cheese omelet, I had a short stack of pancakes and our son had biscuits and gravy.  It was a delicious comfort breakfast giving us the energy needed to embark on our 11-hour 740 mile journey home.

On the way home we diverted through Darlington to make a stop at Darlington Raceway.  This diversion took us a different way home for a bit as we left the main roads near Rockingham and went through small towns and cottonfields of South Carolina until reaching Darlington Raceway and the track's museum. We went through a cemetery in the small town of Cheraw, found a rare to us black squirrel and saw tons and tons of cotton.  

As a NASCAR fan, I always enjoyed watching races from Darlington.  The track that has always been "Too Tough to Tame" has provided many good races throughout the years.  It was pretty cool to get to see the track and put in to perspective what I have seen on tv.  They also have a nice museum with a collection of cars and memorabilia from the NASCAR community.  It is also home to the National Motorsports Press Associations Hall of Fame. 

Once the tour of the museum and track was over and a quick stop for pecans and sweets for the drive, we headed back on our journey home.  As much as I love road trips and seeing sights as we travel, the 2-lane stretch of I-95 in South Carolina has me rethink flying over driving each and every time!  Here we are in 2021 and almost the entire length of I-95 in SC is two lanes and ridiculous congested.  But once the interstate opened up to three plus lanes at the Georgia line, we were smooth sailing the remainder of our drive home.  

It was a fun vacation.  We travelled just over 1,500 miles, saw a whole bunch of new and exciting things, learned a lot, experienced a new region of North Carolina and made a bunch of memories.  I will be going through the thousands of photos taken during the trip over the next few days/weeks.  Be sure to follow the website and see the photos as they are published and to hear more of the trip.