SOUTHERN VACATION: DAY 1 AND 2

We are still in the process of sorting through thousands of pictures, so these posts are going to come in little sections at a time. Here are some highlights of the first couple of days:We flew into Charlotte, North Carolina and after getting situated and speaking with the front desk clerk to find out the best place to eat in town, ended up going out to dinner at "Mac's" Barbeque. It was delicious and an appropriate introduction to our week of southern food. Those southerners like their barbeque sauce and fried chicken! I'm happy to report that they've perfected it, even for people like me who like sort of plain, boring food!

The next day began with a Nascar experience. Wayne is a fanatic of the sport and since we were right outside of Mooresville it only made sense to make his little boy dreams come true. We went to Penske racing and watched them working on the actual cars used for the races, including Kurt Busch's cars. Nascar day would have given us the perfect opportunity to poke fun at Wayne's man crush on Kurt Busch, but we soon realized that EVERYONE has a man crush on Kurt Busch. You don't make fun of Nascar in the south!

Our next stop was the building basically dedicated to Dale Earnhardt (I may have spelled that wrong). There was sort of a touching video about his life, although Wayne later explained that he apparently was sort of a jerk on the track. I actually learned a lot of interesting things about Nascar and I'm happy to admit that we all had more fun than was anticipated.

After Mooresville we drove 3 hours into the mountains to a cute little town called Ashville. We had two purposes in Ashville and the first was this McDonalds. A couple of weeks before Calvin and Karissa were watching a television program on McDonalds in the world and this was one that was included as America's fanciest McDonalds. It had a fireplace, a baby grand piano, and some pretty fantastic bathrooms! The food was the same but the ambiance was fabulous. Right as we were leaving we saw a woman who had gotten hit by a truck in the parking lot. She was laying on the ground right next to our vehicle so I had to back the vehicle out around her body while Karissa directed me. But that's another story altogether..... Our next stop was one of my favorite places....the Biltmore Estate. It was this enormous estate with hundreds of acres and all sorts of things to do.

The house itself took a while to get through and the grounds around it were classy looking and made us feel like we were in Europe.

My favorite parts were the gardens, lakes, and tress on the property. There was this random little water fountain by the gardens that we all, of course, had to drink out of. It was nasty and I'm pretty sure the water was pumped from the lake. Good times!

Here's one of the lakes we walked around. Wouldn't you LOVE to be able to have this on your property and sit by whenever you wanted to. I really need to re-think the ghetto that I live in!

Our final leg was to see the stables, drive by the winery, and go up to the hotel that is built on the other side of their property. What an ideal place to get away for a weekend. There was horseriding, kayaking, 4-wheel-drive tours. I would love to be able to come back here again and soak it all in for a couple of days.

After leaving Ashville, North Carolina we had a 4 1/2 hour drive down to Savannah, Georgia so we stopped off at the Beacon Drive-In for dinner. There were all sorts of signs on the roads saying it was world famous, and when we got there we were informed that it was featured on the food network. This gentleman would take our order and yell it out to the cooks. I didn't really understand when he talked because of his thick accent but at one point he had me yell my order out with him. I must have done a good job because I got what I ordered, and it was pretty good. All in all I'd say our first days were pretty successful!