Which is why, when Labor Day rolled around, I felt like we should take advantage of the three-day weekend and the last big hurrah of summer. (Though it's usually plenty warm enough to feel like summer around here for at least a month after Labor Day.)
I scoped out campgrounds. (Most of the good ones were full, leaving me to consider camping somewhere sort of lame … like Raleigh.) I made Ray clean out the SUV. I decided we could leave right after my haircut appointment on Saturday morning. But in the end, I was just too overwhelmed by the thought of packing all the camping gear up and going somewhere that wasn't much different than home.
So we enjoyed a stay-cation. We did vacation-like activities and still got to sleep in our own beds. It was perfect, and I wasn't so worn out that I needed another day off when I had to return to work Tuesday.
We did fun things. And they didn't cost much. If you didn't know it, you'd think we were on vacation. Without the three-hour drive and the 483 "Are we there yets?"
We went "hiking."
It wasn't hiking by a hiker's standards, but we walked in the woods so that's pretty close. I wanted to go somewhere for more of a day hike, but I was afraid the state parks (Pilot Mountain, Hanging Rock, etc.) would be packed on a beautiful Saturday of a holiday weekend. So we stayed closer to home. We made our first trip the Chinqua Penn Walking Trail. The Chinqua Penn Plantation is one of the coolest places. Well, it used to be before this crook bought it and ruined it. But I'd never been to the walking trail around the property.
It was a lovely. Not quite 2 miles, the trail meanders through sunlight-dappled woods and wide-open fields of crops. The walk takes you past some of the structures the Penns used on the estate: a stewhouse, a gazebo, a dam and a spring house … all made of locally quarried rock. Several man-made ponds/lakes dot the site, and much of the trail parallels a tricking stream.
Near the end, you can get a glimpse of the once-magnificient mansion that's now locked up and for sale.
It was quite hot, but we took Hank and couple bottles of water. I expected Sawyer might get bored or tired of walking, but he asked lots of questions about the structures we passed and said "he wasn't even a little bit tired."
It is somewhere I think we'll definitely go "hiking" again.
Our coolest find: This giant tobacco hornworm munching beside the lake! It looked like an alien.
We went boating.
When I consider our kayak outing on the Randleman Reservoir, I can classify it as a major success or a minor failure depending on my perspective.
Shipwreck, starboard side!
I could rank it as a success because we both stayed in the boat the entire journey. Anyone who has kids knows they get antsy and can be unpredictable. I had warned Sawyer that he'd better stay seated and not rock the boat or we could flip out, but you just never know. He got a little antsy and bored, but we stayed dry. Always a positive.
But truth be told, Sawyer wasn't as impressed as I thought he'd be. I figured he'd think paddling out to the middle of giant lake was super cool. I underestimated his capacity to be wowed by nature. So I had to be creative. We navigated around dangerous "shipwrecks" (trees and limbs sticking out from the water). We stayed on alert for ferocious beasts on short like alligators (my idea) and cheetahs (Sawyer's creation). We stopped to check out real wildlife (mostly turtles and herons but also a couple deer pointed out to me by this annoying photographer on the dock), too.
We only were on the water for an hour and a half. My arms still had some paddling power in them, but Sawyer was starting to fuss and say he couldn't sit still any longer. When a 4-year-old says those words, in the middle of a lake, you respect them.
It was a fun outing for me at least. And I think I could convince Sawyer to go paddling to hunt for pirates again someday.
We went exploring.
Now that I work days, we don't get to go to museums and fun places that close at 5 p.m. Going on the weekends can be a challenge because they're so much more crowded. (Have you noticed this recurring theme about our outings this year?)
Holidays can be iffy too. Sometimes places are more crowded because lots of people (especially parents) are off work and out of school. But on big travel holidays, you can luck out and find places fairly empty.
We decided to brave it and go to SciWorks. I'm an explorer. I have places that I love returning to, but mostly I like going to new places, especially museum-type spots. I get bored seeing the same exhibits over and over.
So we took advantage of the discount rate that comes with our Greensboro Science Center memberships and visited the science center in Winston-Salem.
I hate to admit this, but I think the kids museum in Winston are better than ours in Greensboro. The kids museum there is much newer, so it's got cooler stuff. But I also think it's just more creative and interactive. I much prefer going to their kids museum, even though ours is close enough to our house to walk. And I feel bad about that because Sawyer loves them both and doesn't care which we go to as long as we GO!
I was curious what SciWorks would be like because I expected the Greensboro Science Center to far overshadow it. It's bigger and has a lot more new stuff (and the zoo and Sciquarium are super cool). But it wasn't bad. It was small, but it covered lots of topics (physics, nature, astronomy, music/sound, health/anatomy and more). And again, I feel like it is more interactive than Greensboro's, where I feel like there are lots of things to just look at and read versus things to touch and do.
This cool mirror prism
The sound lab had a neat walk-on piano.
We had a picnic lunch outside and then spent a couple hours wandering through the place. (If we go again, we'll allow for more time.) We tried to see the astronomy show, but Sawyer was bored and kept asking when it was going to start. After the third time asking (we were 15 minutes into the show), I told him we could leave. (The guy was quite boring. When you're astronomy puns are falling flat on the parents, you know the kids aren't getting them.)
Giant teeth … there was a smaller model of a mouth where you could fit in bridges, crowns and fillings.
Live bobwhite quail in the animal exhibits.
Speed checker.
My favorite part was the construction exhibit, Cityville. It wasn't permanent, so it probably won't be there if we go back. But you could build a plaza out of geometric shapes and then a computer would assess what shapes you'd used and calculate the cost of the plaza. Certain shapes cost more, so it was interesting to see how the price might influence the design. And obviously, the more elaborate = more expensive. There was also a setup where you could use heavy blocks (almost like gold bars) to build a dam and try to hold back the rushing water. The blocks didn't fit perfectly, so it leaked. But we built one that held back the water enough to start a small pond, before the pressure got too great and the whole thing came crashing down in a giant flood. I could've played with that for hours.
We had a great time and both wished we could've stayed longer.
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