Visiting the State Capitol in Raleigh, North Carolina…

The motherboard for my laptop arrived in the mail and after I removed all the goodies from my old one and reinstalled them on the new one I am back in the computer business. I spent $65.00 for the refurbished motherboard, $10 for a new case back with good hinges and $5 for a new wifi card. So for $80 I have a laptop that will be good for at least another two years and I didn’t have to buy a new one. It is always nice to save a few bucks when retiring early and having no pension or social security coming in (yet)…

With all the rains that came through this area we kept adding days at this RV park for only $20 per night as their Passport America rate. Well the camp host came by this past Sunday and told us that if we paid $10 more she would switch us to monthly since we had nearly paid the $350 monthly rate twenty bucks at a time. So we paid the ten spot and were paid up through the 17th. We plan to leave before then but it gave us plenty of time to re-plan our route south.

With all the flooding in South Carolina it was good we are staying longer to allow the waters to recede and for life to get back to normal in that flooded state. We will leave here no later than Wednesday morning and start a southerly route. We decided not to head into the North Carolina mountains this time around so we will be getting into Florida a little earlier than we originally planned.

In the meantime we have really been having a ball playing all the different disc golf courses here. There are some really nice city and county parks near us. Our location makes it less than an hours drive to a lot of great places to visit such as Chapel Hill, Raleigh, Pinehurst and Pittsboro. Therefore we have been enjoying forays to each of those locations play disc golf, visit with our daughter and go for occasional brewery visits all of which have made the time here really pass by nicely.

While my laptop was out of action we were able to make a run up to Raleigh to check out the state capitol there. While the state capitol  is somewhat unimpressive on the outside this Greek Revival building has a story to tell on the inside. After the first capitol was destroyed in a catastrophic fire in June 1831 it took seven years to have this one built.

What sets this capitol apart from many of the others that we have visited is the amount of restoration that it has undergone. Not just architecturally restored but historically restored. For example the beautiful state Senate and House chambers have been meticulously restored to their 1840 appearance. Also on the third floor rooms such as the State Library Room and the State Geologist's Office have been historically re-created such that their appearance today is the same as it was in the late 1850’s. We lingered a long time admiring the attention to detail. What a great state capitol to visit!

Although we are still finding fun things to do in the area I am eagerly looking forward to having our wheels spin again soon as we continue on our quest to head south like the migrating birds…