Asheboro

I love to travel. It doesn't have to be any big deal or to anywhere fancy. I just love any opportunity to explore a new place. Apparently, my love for adventuring has passed on to my children, and the other night one of them was lamenting at dinner that, "It's been over a year since we left the state!" How criminal. I reminded this child that while it was within North Carolina, we did travel to Asheboro over spring break. This child loved that trip, but that wasn't good enough.

So here is a little about the trip that doesn't count.

North Carolina has a really nice zoo. All of the billboards even advertise it as the world's largest zoo. And our passes to the local aquarium get us into the zoo for free. However, we had never carved out time to take the kids there. I wasn't able to take off a lot of time over spring break, but I was able to take a few days, which sounded like the perfect opportunity to explore the zoo.

In addition to having an aquarium pass, we have a museum pass that we planned to use to get into a nearby science museum. I had an easy, inexpensive little mini-break all planned out. But then the weather refused to cooperate. I hate when that happens. And the stress of trying to figure out another plan may have led to me having a little breakdown while sitting in our minivan in the Harris Teeter parking lot on the way out of town. I may have mentioned something about needing a vacation to plan a vacation. But it was a gorgeous day, and the driver of our vehicle (mercifully, not me) made an executive decision to head directly to the zoo. It was a good decision. The forecast was for torrential rain the next afternoon, and we opted to see half the zoo on Day 1 and the other half on Day 2.

We live about 3.5 hours from the zoo, and we stopped halfway for lunch at Arby's. Miraculously, this was our only stop (at least that I can recall six months later) and we made it to the zoo by early afternoon. When we arrived at the zoo, we were presented with the dilemma of going in through the entrance in the North American exhibit or the entrance in the African exhibit. We opted for North America, which was closest.

Many people had shared with me how large the zoo was, but it hadn't quite registered until I got there. Many parts of it look more like a nature preserve than a zoo, and it is filled with spacious outdoor areas where animals can actually roam. Five of us absolutely loved it, and the usual suspect spent the entire afternoon whining about how much walking was involved. We all did our best to ignore Usual Suspect since there was way too much fun to be had. And despite the zoo being so large, the exhibits were structured to allow us to get very close to some of the animals.

 

 

This guy kinda snuck up and was suddenly RIGHT THERE.

And Mike's highlight of the day was when a brown bear turned and I ended up with a picture of the brown bear's bum. Good stuff to an eight-year-old boy!

After checking out the animal exhibits on the North American side, we took the zoo tram back to the entrance. Thank goodness for the zoo tram. I think we would have all been feeling like the Usual Suspect if we had tried to make the mile-plus walk back to the entrance at that point. Once we were back near the entrance, the kids explored the playground and other hands -on areas. One of the kids' favorite spots was a man made creek and waterfall that they were allowed to play in. It was a fun and wet way to end that days' zoo adventure.

 

After walking around all afternoon, we were starving. We checked in at our hotel and then went looking for food. There were a lot of chain restaurants near our hotel, but we bravely checked Yelp for other recommendations. We ended up at a little Mexican restaurant that, quite frankly, looked rather sketchy on the outside, but was nicely decorated inside and had very friendly staff. The food was amazing, and the kids ate everything, including five baskets of chips. Whew.

We were greeted by highly overcast skies on the morning of Day 2, and we made sure to arrive at the African entrance of the zoo as soon as it opened. As spacious as the North American side had been, the African side took space to a whole new level. Many of the animals were in a safari area that was large enough you could take a bus tour of it. There was a walking path all along one side of it, and with the animals being spread out over so many acres, I was nervous about not being able to see them clearly. That was clearly not an issue for this ostrich who decided to come over and say hello. 

And the highlight of the day, if not the entire trip, for Mike was getting to watch the elephants use the bathroom. Not pretty, but definitely impressive.

It started raining on us around the time we were finishing our tour of the African side, so we quickly made it back to the tram station. We ended up having to wait a really long time for a tram, but thankfully we were under a cover and stayed dry. And the heavy rains didn't arrive until right after we boarded a tram.

We went back to our hotel to dry off then decided to head out to explore. Asheboro is pretty small, but they had a mall. After the kids spent over three hours in the tiny mall in Jacksonville, NC back in December, I had no doubts they we would find something to do there. The Asheboro mall wasn't large either, but it included a video arcade. That happened to have free play of classic video games like Ms. Pacman and Galaga they day we were there. And that, of course, was the highlight of Leon's trip. 

We ended the day with a simple dinner at the hotel - the kids had Lunchables and the grown ups ate Chinese take out from the mall. The kids and I then went swimming. And that night we slept - the really satisfied, deep sleep that comes after two days of walking in the fresh air. Our little vacation may not have counted as an official vacation to the kids, but it was very enjoyable and a great way to explore another part of North Carolina.