My Trip to North Carolina

  As most of you know, or now you know if you didn't know me until recently, that I went to Nashville as well as North Carolina.  Now let's take a lot of the travel out of the way, because from Nashville to where I stayed in Hickory, it's about a six hour drive.  The good thing is you get to see the mountains of Appalachia which are very nice.  The bad is a six hour drive.  However, it is really amazing for scenery.  In retrospect, in the wake of the terrifying and devastating wildfires in Tennessee, it is a place I should have spent a day or two more in but the landscape is so beautiful and to see it coming back is something I feel for the people of east Tennessee.  However there was a visit to a friend prior to getting to Hickory, a longtime friend that I finally got to meet.
  Some of you know I have a friendship with my friend Erika.  She and I have been friends I would think like six years or so.  Since she lives in North Carolina and I live in Wisconsin, it's tough to get time to visit friends elsewhere.  But with this time I got off of work, I was able to plan with Erika to come see her and hang out with her.  So on my way to Hickory, I went to see Erika and get lunch with her as well as donuts.  So with that, we had lunch at a very amazing restaurant called Bruce's Fabulous Foods and the donuts from Mr. Bob's Donuts.  The food and the donuts were absolutely spectacular and if anyone is in the Marion area, definitely I would recommend going there for this.  But it was a lovely time with Erika and hopefully I get to see her again sometime soon.  And that I get to see Marion again because it is a very lovely town settled at the edge of the mountains.  Anyway, Erika is a lovely friend who has been there for me for forever it seems and I am glad we can continue being close and I always want the best for her.  And we take a really good picture together if I do say so myself.

Erika and I

  The next thing I did after the time with Erika was get checked in in my hotel in Hickory.  After that, I headed to Greensboro for a pre-season NBA game between Boston and Charlotte.  I'll follow up with that in a future blog.  Also, I went to JGR fan-fest and met my friend Kabell, which I will also follow that up in a future blog.  Also, I was supposed to go to a Carolina Hurricanes game, but there was the Hurricane that dumped a ton of rain in the Raleigh area and didn't want to risk it so I didn't go.  Hickory has some great restaurants, like Cracker Barrel and Zaxby's which I tried for the very first time.  The hotel I stayed in was absolutely incredible as well.  So I got to see some incredible smaller towns but also something I would recommend for people is they have Hickory Motor Speedway so if you are a racing fan and love short tracks to head there.  Otherwise there are a ton of baseball teams in the minor league level as well as if you are a basketball lover, well there are a ton of college basketball teams, including Asheville and Greensboro as well as the rest of the NC schools.  But I would definitely go out to explore more when I have another opportunity to do so.