Greensboro, NC

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November 2, 2012 - This is Clay's long-awaited 64th birthday gift trip. Back in June, we booked this Autumn Train Excursion to Appomattox, VA with the NC Transportation Museum. You may recall that we did this trip last year, but to Toccoa, GA. We enjoyed that trip so much, that we wanted to make sure to go again this year. As last year, we opted to travel in Tourist Class which was in standard Amtrak equipment. Our tickets were $150/per person. The train this year had 25 cars. We were in car 7. Cars 1-9 were standard Amtrak equipment and were all the tourist class passengers. Cars 10 and 11 were the Commissary Car and the Commissary Gift car. Cars 12-23 were all vintage cars and included the Clinchfield car that we rode to DC this spring! Cars 12-23 carried Deluxe Coach Class at $185/pp which included lunch and snacks and beverages, then Premium First Class at $260/pp which included continental breakfast, newspapers, light snacks and beverages and dinner, then there was Dome Class at $295/pp which included riding in the dome cars and continental breakfast, newspapers, plus dinner. I had preordered with our tickets a $20 commemorative t-shirt for Clay. I asked then if it had a nice picture like 2011's and the woman did not know and said it had not been designed yet. I took a chance and ordered it anyway. It was not an attractive shirt and does not have a date or trip name on it. I won't make that mistake again. Next year if we go, I'll let him take his chances shopping on the train trip. I also preordered tickets at $3/pp for the Appomattox Court House National Historic Park which included round trip rides from the train station on public school buses. If they do this trip again next year, we would do it again but buy the extra tickets to the Museum of the Confederacy instead. But I get ahead of myself...

Sadly, by having these non-refundable tickets we missed Clay's brother Warner's surprise retirement party on Saturday afternoon. We were sorry to not be there. All of Clay's siblings and a lot of other relatives were to be there and it was sad to miss the gathering. Clay especially wanted to go, but it was one of those can't be in 2 places scenarios and we had already invested in the train trip and still really wanted to take it as well. Sorry Warner! Hope a great time was had by all and that it was a great surprise!

We drove over to Greensboro after Clay's morning at work and my follow-up visit with Dr. Carnes, the neurologist. He wanted to see me after a month on pramipexole and he thought the tremor was responding well and that reinforced his opinion that I have Parkinson's Disease. We skipped lunch and snacked in the car while listening to one of Clay's audio book CDs. We got to downtown Greensboro in the early afternoon and went straight to our first stop, Blandwood.

I visited Blandwood when I was at UNCG from 1976 to 1980. Clay had never been, though we had visited Greensboro and UNCG since returning to NC in 1990. We are very familiar with the architect A J Davis now, but when I saw Blandwood originally I had never heard of him. Since his name comes up all the time in downtown Raleigh now in discussions of historic properties or Oakwood Cemetery, we frequently hear references to Blandwood, but neither of us had any experiences of it to relate to the conversations. Now, we do. We rang the bell and were rewarded with a private tour for $8 each. It was a very rewarding visit. We learned a lot about Governor Morehead and his family. After the death of his last child, we learned that for about 60 years Blandwood was an addiction treatment facility! That explains a lot about what I remember of it from my late 1970's visit!

After Blandwood, we drove into downtown Greensboro proper to visit the International Civil Rights Museum which is housed in the old Woolworth's building where 1960's Sit Ins took place. I had been there too while at UNCG when it was still a very rundown store and I sat at the lunch counter for a Coke, just to say I had been there. It and downtown Greensboro are very different now! An improvement, but you can't sit at the counter anymore. We paid $10/pp and joined a tour in progress with a group of young black college students. One other older white couple joined our tour shortly after we did and the 4 of us started at the beginning of the tour again after this tour ended. It was nicely done though perhaps as Clay said, a little too close to home. It was interesting that the student group was viewing it as history and we were remembering! You know when you are old! The other couple was not local and perhaps not even Southern, they too seemed to have a different perspective. I was glad we went, Clay seemed mostly uncomfortable with the whole thing. He perked up when I took him across the street and we read the plaques about other notable locals, O. Henry and Vicks.

After that we drove down Eugene St. to our home for the next 2 nights at the Super 8 Motel off the Interstate. We paid a total AARP rate of $108.22 for the 2 nights. For the price, it was a good location and relatively quiet and it included Internet, a refrigerator and microwave, HBO, and a continental breakfast from 6am to 9am. We were happy enough with our choice. We had a room with 2 double beds on the ground floor. The only down sides were that the HVAC unit under the window was loud and the first night some idiot parked a couple of doors down and then honked his horn intermittently for about an hour from around 2 to 4am. We slept undisturbed the 2nd night even with the time change giving us an extra hour!

Then to dinner. Stamey's BBQ has been in Greensboro a very long time and is famed as one of the que restaurants still cooking over wood coals. I don't have a preference for wood vs. gas so this is not important to me. Clay prefers the purity and flavor of wood fire. He has long coveted a meal at Stamey's especially when Bob Garner talks about it! I ate there once when I was at UNCG and did not remember being impressed or making a return trip. Clay would finally get to go and as I predicted, he was disappointed mainly because it is Lexington-style and Clay really prefers Eastern-style. He especially dislikes the red slaw.  I ordered BBQ chicken breast and baked beans instead of the slaw. On the plus side, no onions in the hush puppies. They served on paper plates! Classic.Oh, well. It is now checked off Clay's to do list and got the t-shirt.

We were not tempted by dessert at Stamey's and drove to UNCG for ice cream at Yum Yum. Clay had been here before on a previous trip to Greensboro with me. We were in a chocolate mood I guess as I had a small chocolate cone and Clay had a large chocolate almond cone. The hot dogs smelled delicious and looked like Bright Leaf! I don't know what to make of us both craving a hot dog after eating dinner! Clay got another t-shirt here.

Tomorrow we can actually sleep in a bit as the train doesn't load in Greensboro until after 8am!

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