Fall Road Trip: Day Two

 Ashboro, North Carolina:  Good morning from the Piedmont.  Welcome to the second day of our fall foliage road trip to the Piedmont region of North Carolina.  After grabbing a quick grab and go breakfast from Chick-fil-a, we hit the road for our day of exploration.  Today we are visiting the North Carolina Zoo as well as the Richard Petty Museum.

Our day kicked off with a short drive south to Ashboro and a visit to the North Carolina Zoo.  For those of you who follow the site, you know our family's love of the zoo and our mission to visit as many as we can.  We learned about the North Carolina Zoo thanks to the Nat Geo show Secrets of the Zoo.  From watching that show we instantly knew we had to visit the zoo and today was the day.

The zoo was absolutely huge!  The drive into the zoo showed just how much land the zoo owned, it was pretty much a city all to itself with a great network of roads in and out of the zoo.  We got to the zoo shortly after opening and we felt like we had the zoo all to ourselves.  The zoo is broken up into two regions, North America and Africa and our tour today began in North America.

The North American part of the park features separate ecosystems ranging from swamps and wetlands to arctic and deserts.  It was pretty cool to the variety of animals in one place, some of which we have not seen on any of our zoo journeys so far.  One of our favorites was the arctic fox, the pair were playing with a great blue heron sitting outside the enclosure.  We looked forward to seeing the Sand Cats as well but unfortunately their portion of the desert biome was closed during our visit.  

We then hopped aboard the tram and took a ride over to the Africa region of the park.  This second of the park was home to some of the zoo favorites include lions, gorillas, chimp and the grassland animals.  While here we had a fun exchange of funny faces and stares with a playful chimp.  After touring Africa we hopped back on the tram and headed back to the parking lot.

Yesterday when we stopped by the visitor's center, we picked up a brochure for the zoo.  In the brochure, they warned you that the zoo was bigger than it looks and they were not kidding!  During our touring of the zoo, we exceeded the 10k step goal of our Fitbit before reaching the car and we cheated by taking the tram back and forth from Africa.  

After leaving the zoo, we decided to give our son a chance at driving some mountain roads.  He just received his learner's permit and we thought it would be fun to give him a chance to learn on the hills and curves that the flat lands of Florida can provide.  The great network of roads around the zoo gave him a great chance to learn.  

During the drive, we headed into downtown Ashboro to check it out and it didn't take long for my wife to find her favorite store, Hobby Lobby.  So a detour ensued and an hour later and a bag full of new home decorations, we were back on the road headed for Level Cross.

As a boy growing up watching Richard Petty, I was pretty excited to find out his museum was along our journey today.  The museum was located in Level Cross, where the story of the Petty's began.  From the garage here, the Petty family made their mark on NASCAR.  The rich display of cars and memorial spanned decades of the family's history from Lee, Richard, Kyle and Adam.  It was quite a surreal experience walking the grounds where over 200 NASCAR wins originated from.  From Lee Petty's 1955 Oldsmobile 88 to the #43 Pontiac King Richard ran his final season, it was all on display here.

Following a shopping trip in the museum store, we still had quite a bit of daylight left so we decided to head north to the Guilford Courthouse Military Park to explore the national park which was originally scheduled for tomorrow.  When we got there, we only had about an hour before the park closed so we didn't have time to fully explore the battlefield.  Instead we visited the visitor's center and the area around the visitor's center.

During our ghost tour yesterday, our tour guide talked about the deep haunted history of the battlefield.  So while touring the grounds around the visitor's center, my wife ran her ghost tracking app and it was going off like crazy with activity and we were barely into the whole battlefield.  In fact at one point during the walk, she had a conversation with one of the ghosts.  While standing by one of the graves, the app gave an EVP of tombstone.  My wife asked who's here and the EVP replied homework, when she said she isn't going to do homework she got the EVP consider and then think.  She also got the EVP's Louisiana and Christmas during the walk as well.  While it could all be coincidental, but the timing was consistent with her questioning.  Anyone who knows me knows I am a skeptic, but it does make you think.

After the park closed, we headed out for dinner at Carolina's Diner nearby.  The small diner was highly rated and it was easy to see why.  The food was amazing and after a full day of exploration, we ordered and ate a lot of food.  We started with an order of cheese fries to share.  Then for the dinners I had the smothered chop steak, my wife had turkey and stuff and our son had a cheeseburger with onion rings.  The food was delicious and was really cheap!  We had appetizer, three meals and dessert to go and our bill was only $50.  You can't beat that!

Once dinner was over, we headed back to the hotel for the evening.  Tomorrow we have a stay of exploration here in Greensboro.  We have a reservation of the Civil Rights Museum where the Greensboro sit-in occurred at the Woolworth counter.  We also plan on headed back to the battlefield and a few other stops on the plans.  Be sure to check back for tomorrow's adventures and more photos from the trip.